Here’s a look at three more in-cosmetics North America ingredient trends worth noting:
3. Biodegradable Inputs
Consumers, retailers, manufacturers, and suppliers alike are starting to really look at the full human and environmental impact of what they produce, purchase, and dispose of. And it’s not unusual now for supplies to share data on the biodegradability of their ingredients and to highlight that aspect in marketing.
Among the suppliers touting biodegradable beauty ingredients at the recent in-cosmetics event were Japan-based Sekisui Plastics, showing TechPolymer water biodegradable beads. The company’s TechPolymer is used in several industries (in tech for optical performance, in auto as a coating, and in cosmetics). The product is a resin that’s said to degrade in water and soil.
According to materials Sekisui Plastics shared with Cosmetics Design at the show, TechPolymer is an EFA-series material composed of polyhydroxyalkanoates (3-hydroxybutyrate / 3-hydrosyhexanoate copolymer). The company describes the new ingredient as an “ocean-friendly material…used [as a] sensory modifier to enhance textures of cosmetics.”
A company called EcoShell was showing a raw material made from English Walnut Shell at last week's trade show. The company, based in California’s Sacramento Valley, processes the shells (byproducts from the walnut industry) into an array of sieve sizes for use in any number of exfoliating skin care and personal care products. A display at the EcoShell booth featured sample formulations of facial scrubs, foot scrubs, body scrubs, and more.
The EcoShell company profile posted on the in-cosmetics North America site describes the shell material as an “all-natural, renewable, biodegradable product [that] is a great alternative and very marketable in the current climate.”
4. Sparkly Product Finishes
Sun care product prototypes developed by Seppic were getting a lot of attention at in-cosmetics North America last week, both at the suppliers’ booth and at the Sensory Bar. Named Sunshine and Pixie Dust, the 2 sparkly body and face products are made with SPF and intended for festival-worthy applications, as Laure-Anne Gillon, active ingredients expert on the Seppic Beauty Care North America team, tells Cosmetics Design. The prototypes were made using a thickening and stabilizing ingredient called Sepinov EMT 10 and a skin-protecting algae extract called Antileukine 6.
Sandream Impact had R&D pros and cosmetic scientists shaking up their own shimmery custom nail colors at a Makeup Bar stand featuring Fiesta Nails. The blend-it-yourself stand showcased pigments including Fiesta Precious Coral, Fiesta Turquoise Blue, and Fiesta Emerald Coast as well as borosilicate pearls in Diamond Crystal White and Diamond Crystal Gold.
5. Fire and Ice
And a couple of suppliers at this year’s in-cosmetics North America trade show have been exploring new frontiers when it comes to ingredient sourcing. LipoTrue is looking to the space age while Mibelle is investigating resources from the ice age.
The planet Mars is sometimes referred to as the fire star. And while Diane Horne, West Coast key account manager at LipoTrue, assures Cosmetics Design that the company’s new MARSturizer isn’t actually sourced from Mars, it’s being marketed as an out-of-this world sort of ingredient.
Billed as “hydrastatis from outer space,” MARSturizer is a bacterial ferment generated by the microorganism known as acidophile. Acidophile can be found in a mineral-rich river often described as Mars on Earth. According to nasa.gov, “The Rio Tinto site is ideal for astrobiology research in an extreme acid environment that is a possible analog for the martian subsurface….Bacteria that are present in the very acidic Rio Tinto play a role in producing acid in the river, a byproduct of the metabolism of iron and sulfur minerals in the region.”
The new LipoTrue ingredient promises to rehydrate skin, reinforce the skin barrier, and impart skin regeneration and smoothing benefits as well.
IceAwake, a new ingredient from Mibelle, is also made with the help of bacteria. In this case the bacteria have, until recently, been dormant under glaciers in the Swiss Alps but are now busy making an anti-aging ingredient that addresses skin conditions brought on by lack of sleep.
Cosmetics Design covered news of Mibelle’s IceAwake ingredient innovation during last week’s trade show, reporting, “Inadequate sleep, says Fred Zülli, managing director of Mibelle Biochemistry, down regulates the molecular chaperone BiP. IceAwake corrects for that down regulation, which disrupts normal protein folding. In 2 separate clinical tests (one with tired-looking Swiss people, the other with over-worked Korean people), Mibelle found that IceAwake upregulated BiP 100%. ‘This indicated that protein folding can be carried out more efficiently despite aging,’ according to the company’s one-sheet. Effectively says Zülli, after the clinicals, the people involved in the tests had an ‘improvement in wrinkles and looked younger.’”
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Deanna Utroske, CosmeticsDesign.com Editor, covers beauty business news in the Americas region and publishes the weekly Indie Beauty Profile column, showcasing the inspiring work of entrepreneurs and innovative brands.
